


With Paths Diverged

by wynnebat



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, First Meetings, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Past Character Death, Season/Series 01, Widower Chris Argent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-06 17:25:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14061792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wynnebat/pseuds/wynnebat
Summary: In which Chris has long-since faced his grief, Derek is more proactive, and Allison still falls head over heels for a certain newly turned werewolf.





	With Paths Diverged

**Author's Note:**

  * For [neverminetohold](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neverminetohold/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy this fic, neverminetohold! <3

“And you have your cell? Books?” Chris asks, parking the car outside of Beacon Hills High School. He’s not usually quite so overbearing, but it’s his daughter’s second week of school in a town overrun with werewolves. One murderous alpha, one newly turned beta, and Derek Hale, who Chris heard has turned up in town. “Pens?” If needed, his kid could stab someone with a pen with the best of them.

“Yes, Dad,” Allison says with a drawn-out sigh. She turns to kiss his cheek, her lips curling up impishly as she adds, “But even if I didn’t, there’s a cute boy who’s happy to lend me his.”

Chris remembers her crying over cooties at six years old. Those had been much simpler times. “What’s his name?”

“You’re not running a background check on my classmates.” Allison’s voice is firm, but she’s still smiling.

“There wouldn’t be much to find anyway,” Chris replies. Not through a general background check, otherwise he and his daughter wouldn’t have arrived in this town to investigate in person. “Be good, sweetheart.”

“I always am,” Allison says, slamming the car door shut behind her.

Chris shakes his head slightly at the lie and watches her wave to him before she walks off, joining two teenagers at the front doors of the school. The boys are in a few of her classes, she’s said, and Chris smiles at them through the car window. One of then visibly shudders at the sight, which is just what Chris is going for. He hasn’t lost his touch.

Or maybe he has, because as he watches the group enter the school, the passenger side door opens and a man slips inside. It’s a casual motion, as though this man is someone who has any business being inside Chris’ car.

“Hale,” Chris says, in lieu of knowing what else to say.

Derek smiles at him with too many teeth. He’s certainly grown from the driver’s license picture Chris had pulled up of him, become tall and grown out his facial hair and gained a confidence that’s unfortunately attractive. Ever since his wife died, Chris’ taste has certainly gone downhill. “Argent.”

“Give me one good reason not to shoot you,” Chris says, because attractive or not, this man isn’t anywhere on his side. There are three guns within reach, each bullet full of wolfsbane.

Derek’s eyes gleam, but no color bleeds into his pupils. “I can give you two: the Code and the fact that you wouldn’t want to mess up the interior of your car.”

Chris hates the fact that he’s not wrong. Fuck it, he likes this car. “That doesn’t mean I won’t shoot you if you give me a good reason to. What are you doing here, Hale?”

“I’m here to see if you’ll work with me to take care of the alpha who killed my sister,” Derek says, getting comfortable in Chris’ passenger seat and leaning against the door so that he can face Chris fully. He has a better range of motion than Chris, who’s stuck behind the steering wheel, but there’s no aggression in Derek’s body language.

For now, Chris reminds himself. “I was under the impression that you were part of its pack.”

“No, you weren’t.”

“Maybe not,” Chris agrees, his opinion having changed upon actually seeing this man in person. Derek is too confident, too intent, and there’s a burning anger in his voice when he mentions his sister’s murder. Maybe the newest beta will ally with the alpha, but not this one. Still, Chris isn’t about to say yes. Never mind what Kate would say about the matter—there’s only a week until her arrival and Chris doubts they’d be able to take down the alpha fast enough—it’s just not done. Disbelief colors his voice as he says, “You’d work with a hunter.”

Chris is waiting for a lie or perhaps Derek telling him they have no other choice, but there’s something speculative in Derek’s eyes as he holds Chris’ gaze. It’s an odd look to receive from a werewolf, but it’s not as though Chris has dealt much with werewolves ever since Victoria’s death. Kate does generally display some tact in the hunts she sends him on. But this time, the Argent matriarch said to go to Beacon Hills, and to Beacon Hills Chris had gone.

The balance between himself the the rest of the Argents is an unstable thing. The foundation cracked when Chris left the hunter’s world after Victoria’s death, and when he returned, it was with the insistence that his daughter would never follow in Kate’s footsteps. When she’d been old enough to understand, Chris had given Allison a choice, unwilling to take a possible future away from her. Allison had said no, had promised him she wanted something more than a life submerged in hunting. He’s forever glad that he’d been able to give her the opportunity to want something other than this life. She has dreams and ambitions and she keeps telling him she wants to spend a year teaching in Japan. There’s a life out there for his kid and it’s not one where she’ll die on a rougarou’s claws.

As for, Chris, well. He’ll always be an Argent, no matter how far he runs. These days, it’s just that he kills those he knows without a shadow of a doubt have killed humans themselves. It’s the life he was born into and raised into, and it’s a life that’s haunted him with death and pain—and with the satisfaction that there’s one less cannibalistic wendigo or vicious imp in the world.

“I’m not the only one who’s working on inter-species cooperation,” Derek tells him, looking a little smug as he takes in Chris’ expression. “Imagine my shock when I found Beacon Hills’ newest beta being taught control by a clueless human and a hunter’s kid.”

Well, Chris thinks, never mind. A rougarou’s claws are too good for his rebellious kid. “What was she thinking?” She wasn’t, of course, but at least, “And why didn’t she tell me?” As far as he knows, Allison hasn’t bothered keeping that kind of information from him. Not when she knows how much Chris values her safety after what had happened to Victoria.

“Young love,” Derek drawls, crossing his arms.

Chris waits for some indication that Derek is joking, but nothing comes. “I’m going to kill the both of them.”

“Your heartbeat and scent are painting a different picture,” Derek replies, and that look is back, the one that feels like Derek wants to open him up and look inside. “You’re irritated, but you’re not angry. You’re not terrified.”

“Allison can take care of herself,” Chris says in reply. There hadn’t been another path once Victoria was gone; alone, Chris couldn’t always be there for her and Allison needed to know how to protect herself. “Especially against a young beta who has no idea what he’s doing.” He wonders which one of the two boys he’d seen is the beta. The one with shaggy hair, he thinks, who’d greeted his daughter with that wide smile. Chris will find out his name in a matter of minutes once Derek leaves him be, though he won’t do anything for now.

“You’re not disgusted, either,” Derek says, some wonder in his tone. “Scott told me what she’d said once she found out he was a werewolf: that it’s not fangs and claws that make someone bad, that you have to choose to be a monster. That’s not the Argent line.”

“It’s just ours,” Chris admits.

“Your wife,” Derek says, the words an explanation in and of themselves.

Ten years ago, Victoria had committed suicide after an alpha’s bite, and when his seven year old daughter had asked him why, Chris hadn’t been able to give her an answer for years. At first he’d lied, then he’d said Victoria hadn’t had another choice, and eventually he’d had to admit that it wasn’t that there hadn’t been another choice. He’d sat Allison down and told her about werewolves and their sharp teeth and claws, and about hunters and the rigid roads they walked.

“After she died, I needed to know if she could’ve been able to live an honest life as a werewolf.” Wryly, he adds, “Call it emotional masochism.” A few years of ducking away from the rest of the Argents while he’d tried to gain some understanding in this chaotic world. It hadn’t made him happier to let the haze of his upbringing fade from his vision, but he’d needed it anyway. It dawns on him then, that, “You looked into me.”

Derek’s lips curl up into something that looks much more like a smile this time. “I did. I needed to know if I could trust you to follow the Code in word. I realized I could trust you to follow it in spirit, too.”

Somehow, Derek is able to make even a background check sound flattering. Chris huffs, trying to ignore the way Derek’s shirt hugs his chest beneath the open leather jacket. Against his better judgment, Chris says, “I wouldn’t mind a partnership.”

“Good,” Derek says. “I’ll drop by tomorrow morning with some evidence you need to see. This situation needs to be taken care of as quickly as possible.”

“Why?” Chris asks, suspicion warring with anticipation.

“I can't exactly take you out on a date with a rogue alpha running around town,” Derek replies. He sounds too confident of his welcome, much too confident, despite the fact that Chris’ heart isn’t beating fast with _fear_. “We werewolves do have a serious weakness for Argents.”

“You should take more care with your weaknesses.” It’s the only thing Chris can manage to get out, so stunned that if Derek were to pull his claws on him right now, Chris doesn’t think he’d reach his guns in time. It’s a good distraction tactic, but there’s nothing in Derek’s expression that points to a tactic. There’s only a shadow of something that Chris might call hunger, wrapped up in that perfect package of determination.

“I’ve never quite figured out how,” Derek tells him. “But I’ve gotten better at following my instincts.”

Derek leans in and Chris tries to remember his own instincts, but they’ve been submerged under that look in Derek’s eyes. It’s only the barest brush of lips, soft and warm, and then Derek is stepping out of Chris’ car as abruptly as he’d stepped into it.

“Don’t linger too long here, it’s a high school after all,” Derek says, his grin registering in Chris’ mind before his words.

Moments after Derek shuts the door and walks off, Chris doesn’t bother to raise his voice as he says, “You have even less of a reason to be here, Hale.”

As Chris watches him walk away, he realizes that Derek Hale is terribly dangerous, but not at all for the reasons he'd first assumed. Tomorrow, Chris will drop Allison off and return home, probably to find Derek already there. As much as Chris tries, he can’t turn his anticipation into caution. It’s possible that Argents have a weakness of their own, one that Derek and that beta have managed to tap into so very easily.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> I'm also on tumblr as @[crownwithoutstones](https://crownwithoutstones.tumblr.com/).


End file.
